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UNDER SPRING UNDER SPRING voices+art+los angeles Jeremy Rosenberg Heyday, Berkeley, California California Historical Society, San Francisco, California © 2014 by the Metabolic Studio LLC All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Heyday. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosenberg, Jeremy. Under Spring : voices+art+Los Angeles / Jeremy Rosenberg. pages cm ISBN 978-1-59714-295-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bon, Lauren, 1962- Under Spring. 2. Outdoor art—California— Los Angeles. 3. Los Angeles (Calif.)—History—Anecdotes. I. Title. N6537.B5875A4 2014 709.794’94—dc23 2014020101 Cover photo and images on pages ii, xxiv, 14, 28, 40, 56, and 72 are courtesy of the Metabolic Studio LLC. Cover Design: Ashley Ingram Interior Design/Typesetting: Rebecca LeGates Orders, inquiries, and correspondence should be addressed to: Heyday P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, CA 94709 (510) 549-3564, Fax (510) 549-1889 www.heydaybooks.com Printed in China by Print Plus Limited. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents vii STATEMENT BY ANTHEA HARTIG AND MALCOLM MARGOLIN ix ARTIST’S STATEMENT BY LAUREN BON xi PREFACE xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv INTRODUCTION xix DRAMATIS PERSONAE 1 1: UNDER SPRING 15 2: THE TOMBS 29 3 HOMELESS 41 4: CONCRETE IS FLUID 57 5: WU WEI 73 6: ANOTHER CITY IS POSSIBLE 97 ABOUT THE AUTHOR VII statement anthea hartig and malcolm margolin The California Historical Society and Heyday are delighted to publish the winner of the first annual California Historical Society Book Award: Under Spring: Voices + Art + Los Angeles. We wanted to bestow our first award on a book that would break new ground, a book that would inspire us not only by the information it conveyed but by the form the information took, a book of sound scholarship accessible to a wide audience, a book that breathed with life. We got what we were looking for in Under Spring, a work of literary daring and unconventional structure that bristles with energy. In this inspired, intelligent, masterfully constructed crazy quilt, Jeremy Rosenberg viscerally evokes a place—the space under Los Angeles’s North Spring Street Bridge. This site of urban blight was utterly transformed by a visionary, multi-year conceptual art project, Under Spring by Lauren Bon and her Metabolic Studio. To tell this story, Rosenberg assembles and juxtaposes short excerpts of oral histories from a mind-boggling variety of people—scholars, drug addicts, local activists, government officials, architects, musicians, a puppeteer, a choreographer, a VIII ANTHEA HARTIG AND MALCOLM MARGOLIN couple of disc jockeys, security guards, artists, etc. Out of it emerges a complete picture of the transformation, as different experiences are refracted, combined, amplified with a pleasing fullness. Under Spring is great history—one that embraces pain, beauty, and mystery—and great reading. It is a work that opens us to more fully experience, understand, and feel the past in the present, speaking to us in a new voice that affirms the underlying creativity and worth of the human enterprise. It is our hope that this book will refresh the spirit, stimulate the imagination, and engender a new way of expressing historical perspectives. We are honored to present the inaugural California Historical Society Book Award winner and we are deeply grateful to our fellow jury members who chose this book: Albert Camarillo, Ph.D., Professor of History, Stanford University; Shelly Kale, Publications and Project Manager, California Historical Society; Eileen Keremitsis, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, California Historical Society; Gary F. Kurutz, California Rare Books School, California State Library Foundation; Ralph Lewin, former President and CEO, Cal Humanities; and Gayle Wattawa, Acquisitions and Editorial Director, Heyday. —Anthea M. Hartig, Ph.D., Executive Director, California Historical Society and Malcolm Margolin, Publisher, Heyday IX artist’s statement lauren bon If you stand on the Spring Street Bridge and look north, you’ll see another bridge, one with faux Ionic columns cast in fiberglass resin. Spring Street and Broadway bridges are two of a dozen bridges that span the Los Angeles River between the San Fernando Valley and Downtown Los Angeles. Like siblings, the two bridges have much in common—proximity to tracks carrying rushing trains past, to the concrete channels of the L.A. River, and to Eastside communities with active gang problems. A major difference between the two is that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority keeps space under the Broadway Bridge, whereas the space under the Spring Street Bridge has never served an official purpose. People with nowhere else to go showed up regularly here, like nomads who saw this space as part of their commons. It was an unmarked place but also a live node. My studio space, the Metabolic Studio, is in a repurposed storage building adjacent to the site. From 2006 to 2013, the Studio and I transformed this marginalized public space—“God’s most destitute place on earth” as nearby graffiti proclaimed—into Under Spring, an artwork that encompassed a vibrant venue for art, inquiry, experiments in urban greening, and celebrations both private and public. As the name implies, the artwork is about being under the X LAUREN BON Spring Street Bridge—really inhabiting it, not just passing by. It is a space we have cared for, lived next to, and breathed into. Under Spring is ultimately a social sculpture. It is about our commons. The name has other intended meanings. “Spring” calls to mind water—it alludes to the mother ditch, the historic Zanja Madre, which made the first pueblo viable. Under Spring is also suggestive of winter, the season that precedes new growth, a time and place for being underground, for incubation, latency and potentiality. Currently, the Spring Street Bridge is being broadened and strengthened. This process involves expunging all living things, from artworks to sparrows in their nests. The new underside of the bridge will be different. Large concrete walls to support the enlarged road will divide up the space. There will be more shadows. XI preface From 2005 to 2009, I was privileged to spend time in an extraordinary place. As a contractor and then an employee of the Annenberg Foundation—a multi-billion- dollar philanthropic entity—I worked on the Downtown Los Angeles–based projects of the artist Lauren Bon. These projects included the creation of a thirty- two-acre park, Not A Cornfield; the formation of the culture hive and think tank, Farmlab, and the Metabolic Studio that followed; and the massive undertaking that became Under Spring. As a writer, I was used to having to travel from place to place in search of fantastic stories. During the years above, I didn’t have to go anywhere. All the stories came to me. One day, the mayor would stop by. The next, leading academics. The next, Native American activists preparing for a ceremony. The next, famous international artists, musicians, or actors. Then, a homeless heroin junkie looking for a fix. Or somebody looking to take their dog on a walk down by the river. Such was everyday life at the transfixing and tectonic project called Under Spring, which you’ll read about in the coming pages. Under Spring was, on one hand, a self-contained conceptual artwork. On the other hand, it was a kaleidoscopic microcosm of the city and greater region. It’s among the biggest clichés of all: “If only these walls could talk…” But for years at and around Under Spring, the graffiti-covered walls cried out a cacophony of words and images. Add to that the various cultural traditions that feature riversides and crossroads as special sites of storytelling, the egalitarian soapbox XII PREFACE opportunities afforded by many parks, and the specific tradition of open public comment stemming from the pre-planting days of Not A Cornfield; and it seemed appropriate to present the histories of the place in an “as told to” manner. The interlaced and overlapping storytelling style in the book echoes the pace and mood of the project. Scores of mostly one-on-one interviews were conducted for this book, and sixty-six of those voices ultimately made their way into the text. By the time you read these words, Under Spring will be long gone, another urban ghost. The recollections cataloged here aim to keep the project’s spirit alive—and inspire other such efforts, whether nearby or afar. —Jeremy Rosenberg, 2014 XIII acknowledgments Special thanks to everyone who took the time to be interviewed for and otherwise participated in this project. All quotes are from interviews I conducted except for the following: Ed Porter interview by Monica Henderson for Farmlab at Under Spring, May 2007; Rosmelia Rodriguez interview by Cathy Ortega for Farmlab at Under Spring, December 2008; Ed P. Reyes, Tom LaBonge, Richard Montoya, Deborah Szekely, and Cindi Alvitre quotes from their public remarks during “Optimists’ Breakfast: What Patriotism Means to Me” at Under Spring, February 2009; Autumn Rooney quotes from her diary and used by permission; and Lauren Bon quotes from KCET.org interview with Bill Kelley Jr., “Sustainable L.A.,” June 29, 2008, courtesy KCET.org. Thank you to Cindy Bautista, Olivia Chumacero, Cathy Ortega, and Teresa Ramirez Katz for Spanish-to-English translation assistance. Further thanks to John Pecorelli, Steve Rowell, Chris Nichols, Clark Robins, Sharon Sekhon, Jesus Sanchez, Jane Harrington, Julie Pittman, Lila Hempel-Edgers, Dr. Reba Rosenberg, Gail Rosenberg, and Michael Rosenberg. Extraordinary thanks to Malcolm Margolin, Anthea Hartig, Gayle Wattawa, and everyone involved in this collaboration between Heyday and the California Historical Society.